A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is software that collects and organises data from multiple touch points to create a unified profile of customer data. The unified data is then structured and segmented to be sent to various other marketing tools, enabling marketers to have easy and direct access to customer data guiding them to make insightful and data-driven marketing decisions.
In the latest edition of martech OG, Scott Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape, there are now over 8,000 different marketing technology tools on the market. While it’s great to see so many innovative tech solutions out there this can lead to creating a marketing stack made up of a crazy amount of solutions which are then not connected.
Blissfully’s 2019 Annual SaaS Trends Report suggests that the average SaaS company uses over 80 martech tools and systems. The majority of the tools in your stack are designed to collect specific areas of customer data and stores the data in disconnected siloes.
Siloed data doesn’t just make for a fragmented stack, it also results in a fragmented customer journey. IBM estimates that bad data (I.e. incomplete, or inaccurate) data costs the US $3 TRILLION every year. Yep. T-R-I-L-L-I-O-N.
As you reattach your jaw, it should come as no surprise that CDPs are emerging to become at the heart of every marketer's stack, rather than just another addition.
For an optimal martech stack, a CDP is used to centralise the data provided by a collection of various technologies, pulling specific aspects of the data together to create a singular overview of that customer and their journey. Singular Customer Views can be created by a CDP to inform marketers of accurate insights into their customer. The consumer data grouped by a CDP can then be connected to other technologies in your stack to orchestrate actions to deliver consistent, seamless experiences to your customers in real-time.
*Queue the angel’s hallelujah*
CDPs are now being recognised as the missing link in a marketer’s stack. Not only does it have the ability to unify the customer data for the marketer, across multiple technologies, but it has the ability to unify the journey for the customer, across multiple platforms.
As MarTech Alliance consultant, Apoorv Durga, points out:
“Marketers now have access to all customer data, and therefore they don’t need to manage silos of customer data. They can run truly omnichannel campaigns across channels and devices, and they can segment and run sophisticated predictive models on these unified customer profiles and customer data.”
“All of this results in better personalisation, more useful analytics, and an overall improvement to customer experience, which translates into repeat customers, increased loyalty, more leads and sales.”
A CDP is a powerful tool which has the potential to unite your marketing stack and catch all the data that slips through the cracks.
In an industry experiencing constant, rapid growth it can be tricky to know which tools are trends and which are here to stay. Not only does the right CDP offer united customer insights, but it’s a solution that has the ability to future-proof your stack and keep up with the rapid pace of an industry that’s ever-evolving.